Homelessness and the Richmond District

One of the most common topics I hear about as I walk door-to-door talking with voters is the disheartening increase in street homelessness we’ve seen in recent months out here on the west side. The complexity of the issue has challenged City Hall for decades. I think we can all agree that there are no simple solutions.

My heart tells me three things: that we need to do a better job of transitioning the homeless into supportive housing through cost-effective, research-proven programs; that we need to address the affordable housing shortage throughout the City; and that adoption of a semi-permanent tents-on-the-streets solution — one favored by some on the Board of Supervisors and their allies — is a wholly inappropriate solution to this crisis.

This problem has been nearly intractable. Consider my husband’s experience. His late father, who suffered from mental illness in the early 1980s, was one of many who lived without a home in Golden Gate Park for stretches of time. Eventually, he was able to relocate to a more affordable small town and live out a modest but essentially safe life, thanks in large part to Social Security Disability benefits. Just recently, as my husband was walking along Geary Blvd., he was briefly assaulted by a person in psychological distress, a man in just the kind of despair his own father experienced decades ago.

You have probably experienced the complex combination of feelings that emerge during such an interaction: uncertainty, fleeting shock or anger, fear for one’s own safety, empathy for the person in distress, a sense of hopelessness that this extraordinarily wealthy city can’t take care of the most downtrodden, and perhaps a worry that small tokens of compassion — money, or food — are simply exacerbating the situation rather than helping. You aren’t alone, and nobody has the “right answer” for how to feel.

You might yourself have also experienced the anxiety and uncertainty of losing your home and family, or nearly so. The chronic shortage of reasonably affordable housing in San Francisco means thousands of us are right on the edge, worried that our landlord might sell the building, or that we might not make our mortgage. Each year, approximately 8,000–9,000 people are born in San Francisco. Each year, we build between 1,000 and 4,000 new places to live. The housing shortage we as a City are creating is a recipe for displacement, eviction, and, yes, homelessness.

The potentially good news is that consensus is slowly forming around a compelling strategy to reduce chronic homelessness in San Francisco, and it bears a number of important characteristics that are based in research and driven by lessons from cities across the United States. Among these:

• We know better now that homelessness impacts a broad variety of people, and that there are whole families with kids in SFUSD schools experiencing homelessness that is unrelated to opiate, amphetamine or alcohol addiction. And we know that chronic homelessness is immensely difficult and painful, and leads to shortened lives.
• There are more compassionate and less expensive alternatives to calling 9–1–1 when a homeless person is in (non-emergency) distress — if there’s anything you take from this article, I hope it is that you remember to call 3–1–1 and ask to refer your report to the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team (“SF HOT”).
• The recent creation of a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, with newly appointed Director Jeff Kositsky, is the right step towards increased accountability for the various city budget items that go towards supporting the homeless and also better tracking of individuals in our programs. A recent study commissioned by Board President London Breed has demonstrated the opportunities for cost savings in these two important ways.
• The Housing First movement — the concept that it is more cost effective to deal with the causes of homelessness once the person is already housed — is gaining traction over time. Of course, in San Francisco, such a program is much more costly than in, say, Salt Lake City, simply because housing is more expensive. But with the successful launch of San Francisco’s first Navigation Center, we seem to be finding new ways of helping people that are more cost effective and more humane than a simple handout.
• The rate of homelessness is tied inextricably to housing availability. That the west coast of the United States is facing both a housing shortage and a homelessness crisis is no coincidence. Leasing units for supportive housing is initially quite expensive. I don’t want us to be a City that, on one hand, puts enormous barriers in front of modest infill of affordable units in empty lots, and, on the other hand, allows people to spend months living in tents on the street.
• We know that the number of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in the Richmond District alone can be measured in the hundreds. We are beginning to understand that most people without homes in San Francisco were San Francisco residents before becoming homeless — though not all were, and we have to be careful that we aren’t solving problems for other cities and towns that need to pitch in on this with us.
• Allowing people to live in psychological, financial, or addictive crisis in tents on our sidewalks is poor public policy for too many reasons to list here. On June 21st, Supervisors Farrell, Tang, Cohen, and Wiener placed an initiative on the ballot for the November election to guide a more humane city policy around removing encampments and — importantly — providing shelter or housing options to those encamped. This is a welcome move.

The trick for San Francisco is that we, at times, seek out deep partisan divisions even where there are none, demonizing those who hold different views. This is a political problem. We need to acknowledge both the immense human tragedy of homelessness — the total collapse of income and family and the need for government to respond with care — and also that there are a nontrivial number of homeless men and women who engage in inappropriate and illegal street behavior that is unacceptable in a civil society. Simply put: we need to better control the symptoms of the tragedy if we hope to have as a City the political capacity to treat the underlying problem. This is the political reality, and we have to work on this within the confines of political reality.

Recently, and counter to the emerging consensus, we saw an attempt by some on the Board of Supervisors to “require the city to provide bathroom and garbage services to homeless camps of more than 30 people” and “if the city can’t offer permanent or temporary housing … it must provide sanitation services at the camp until housing is available.” [SF Chronicle 4/13/16] To reiterate: sustained, spontaneous public camping on sidewalks is not an appropriate public policy solution for the homeless crisis; it is neither humane nor safe (particularly for those living there) nor politically viable.

We are seeing a broad emerging consensus that favors moving drug-addicted men and women into support programs rather than jail, as well as prioritizing efforts to end family and child homelessness. The unfortunate reality is, if we want to see the situation improve, we are going to have to spend significantly more money as a city, state, and nation acquiring and leasing supportive housing units and transitioning people into these units. This should pay back in future years — we are already paying a premium in hospital visits, cleanup, police enforcement, etc. A recent report commissioned by Supervisor Mark Farrell found that better targeting and tracking of individual homeless persons can pay dividends:

“[T]he top ten percent of service users accounted for 42% of total service expenditures — 81% of those costs, or $92.3 million, were for emergency and urgent care costs … earlier intervention for the top ten percent of users would lessen the steep increases in emergency and urgent care costs that are typical for homeless adults before placement in supportive housing.”

The profound collapse in Federal and State funding for affordable housing means that in addition to working on it at a San Francisco level, we need advocates with experience and contacts in State and Federal government to work to restore this funding immediately and treat it as the regional and national crisis it is. San Francisco is not ready or able to go it alone.

While the problem endures, we must continue to enforce laws in regards to street camping, public health, public drunkenness, and threatening behavior, which are both shocking and endemic. And until the problem ends, we must continue to adopt compassionate, cost-saving policies that move the homeless into supportive housing. The last thing we need are permanent “tent cities” — we need to keep this in mind when voting in November.

Update Sep 9, 2016: We need to treat, with compassion, the symptoms we are seeing in the streets related to public safety and public health. We also need to reduce homelessness through a transition to supportive housing. With these goals in mind, I am recommending yes votes on Proposition Q (prohibiting tents on public sidewalks), Proposition K (extending and increasing the sales tax in order to finance an expansion in funding for homelessness), and Proposition J (directing increased funding towards homelessness and transportation). It is important that we do all of these things simultaneously — we must increase our shelter and supportive housing capacity at the same time as moving people out of unsafe or lawless street encampments. We are seeing in San Francisco a rare moment of broad agreement about how to move forward on this issue, and we shouldn’t squander this opportunity.

Marjan Philhour is a mother of three, small-business owner, and candidate for San Francisco Board of Supervisors in District 1 (Richmond District).